Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Dan Conine <dconine@dotnet.com>]

A "dim" view doesn't do justice to the deceit, lies, and outright
destruction of records which have been carried out in the name of one
Manifest Destiny or another. Always to the profit of some controlling
'prophets' who write the history books ("Do not let them eat from the
tree of knowledge, for then they will become like us.").

The knowledge to care for the land and soil, systems which are so
complex that a single lifetime is not enough to learn them, should be
carried down through deep integration of our lives with what sustains
us. Unfortunately, the 'conquering nature' mindset has prevailed, along
with the 'conquest and Christianization' of people who don't have enough
guns or money to fight it.

Nature requires every species to contribute some kind of Net Creative
usefulness to the universe, or that species will eventually go extinct.
Diversity ensures something will survive under most circumstances.
Monocultures, 'us vs. them' competition, usury, and ignorance have been
the tools of our history. Since we don't have multiple generations left
to change our path, it will most likely be changed by Nature in one form
or another.

Western culture has always thought of itself as The Chosen, simply
because we justify our actions by who remains on top of the pile of dead
bodies. We teach our children that competition and conquest is 'fun',
while cooperation and frugality are 'boring' and farm work is tedious
and hard. Our leaders are syncophants of the rich and the mean, while
our philosophers and farmers are poor teat-suckers of 'liberal'
'entitlement' systems that feed huge university and civil servant empires.
Our most experienced and mature people are locked away in nursing
'prisons' to keep them from interfering with the overtime-laden workday
of the young and 'productive'.

A 'dim' view? Damn right. The first step to changing a corrupt system is
recognizing that it is corrupt. The second step is being able to tell
someone else about it without getting thrown in prison or an asylum.

There are more prisoners than farmers in our country, so who has more
influence on our future; the soil, or the thief who rapes it for ethanol
to drive one more mile to a job to advertise his ethanol stock broker to
more people driving to jobs they work to pay for their cars which are
designed to burn more fuel than necessary and to wear out quickly? The
darkest picture of our culture can be found on the freeways, where three
thousand pounds of steel is used to transport 150lbs of human to an
office building where they sit in front of a computer that is already
connected to the computer they have back in their suburban McMansion.
Is this what we are supposed to think is the "Glory" of the conquest of
the native peoples who cooperated with nature for thousands of years?

Dan

"If you want Change, keep it in your pocket. Your dollar is your only vote."


> Message: 14
> Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:13:38 -0700
> From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
> Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] 1491 New Revelations of the Americas
>       BeforeColumbus
> To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
> Message-ID: <200703122013380430.04C6BF7F@mail.lobo.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>
> Our history is one of using up and destroying our natural resources, out
> soil, water, even the air itself, with no concern for the future. This is
> not a "dim view"; it's a terrible view, and it's accepted fact throughout
> the scientific world today. But we're certainly not the first to foul our
> own nest. Empires through history have ruined the land that sustained them,
> and all empires fall. Greece deforested their islands for timber for ships,
> Rome depleted the soil that fed them. City states in ancient India and the
> Mideast were lost in dust. It goes on and on. 
>
> paul tradingpost@lobo.net
>
> *********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********
>
> On 3/12/2007 at 6:43 PM Barbara Fischer wrote:
>
>   
>> >My goodness, you all have a very dim view of our history.
>> >
>> >Barbara
>> >----- Original Message -----